Erik à la lumière
by Diatomaceous
Summary: This is complete AU - Erik's life.
1. Chapter 1

**This first part is weird. Pretty much unbelievable, I know.**

* * *

It was just as well that he was born without eyes. Whatever birth defect had accosted him in the womb had granted him a hideous appearance to begin with: patchy translucent skin stretched over tiny spidery limbs, a wrinkled hole where the nose had never formed and a sunken, skull-like appearance to his face. It was perhaps a blessing that the deep sockets were only raw holes that could not perceive the horror with which he was regarded.

His mother descended into such despair after his birth that she was committed, along with her child as no other soul would take it. She became mute, then catatonic. When she finally wasted away, the child was left in the care of the asylum as an afterthought. The staff was so used to taking care of infantile degenerates that one more small citizen was hardly a burden. He became almost like a hideous pet.

Left to his own devices, Erik (as he'd been dubbed for lack of anything better) grew through childhood in a state of near solitude. The staff only bothered about him when needed, taking no special pains beyond his most basic needs. It seemed he would be mute as his mother had become, but no one spoke much to him or in his presence, so none could really say.

Erik literally dragged himself up into adolescence, learning to walk through a slow process of exploring the small room that was his world. He turned next to the laborious exploration of the space outside his door, slowly learning his surroundings by touching every surface. It took years to get down the hallway. No one bothered about him, he had nothing but time.

His slow, wary destination was the parlor at the end of the hall from which issued, periodically, a strange jangly banging that was not furniture smashing into the floor or wall. In this way, Erik discovered the piano whose keys were often assaulted by the deranged patients. It was horribly out of tune and Erik added more abuse to the strings as he thumped the keys in bunches himself.

Then, a piano tuner turned mad-man actually undid the discord of the notes before he was lobotomized and became a vegetable. The next time someone hit the keys, there was a an almost melodic crescendo that brought Erik to instant attention. Having no sight, no smell (there-for, no taste) his hearing had become nearly preternatural and it drove him to inspect the piano again. Each key, each tone brought him something new. With a swiftness that belied the years it had taken him to travel the length of the hallway, he started putting the notes together . The other residents of the ward began to complain, at the same time, of a humming in the night that perfectly matched each sound the piano produced.

And so it went. Erik became a virtuoso and no-one cared. Within the asylum, there were dozens of savants whose talents were useless to the outside world.

After he had grown for ten years in that place, where the horror of his countenance had become commonplace, someone found a use for him. A drunkard who came through the institution as a means of procuring a warm bed for the winter (conniving enough to avoid lobotomy and other treatments) devised a business plan with the boy as the main ingredient.

When spring stole away winter's sting, the man quite easily usurped with Erik and, for the next decade, made him into a livelihood. His scheme involved letting a crowd be drawn to the excellent music, then reveal to them the monstrosity that produced such a siren sound. It all went very well until Erik seemed to realize the atrociousness of such an existence and could not be starved nor beaten into further subjugation. After a week of stolidity, what was thought to be his lifeless body was dumped in the night near a graveyard where several corpses awaited burial.

The resurrectionists were at work in the neighborhood and added his prone form to their store, selling the lot to medics who were interested in such spoils. It only took one incision for Erik's vitality to be detected as it elicited a piercing scream from what anyone looking would have thought to be a cadaver in the ready stages of decay. The medic in question had been brought up in Persia and seen the horrors of the Shah's entertainments. Such a past spoke volumes when he did not instantly give way to insanity inducing horror at the occurrence.

Instead, not knowing what else to do with such a specimen, he bundled Erik out of the venue and to his own lodging. His landlady, made of stalwart stuff after a lifetime of common drudgery, accepted the appearance of the Persian's charge with only raised eyebrows. She suggested the patient be housed either in the basement where the boiler kept the dark closeness warm, or up on the third floor where the apartment had a wide window almost always full of too-warm sun.


	2. Chapter 2

"Madame Giry, there seems to be a commotion in the street."

The voice was so hushed and melodic that M. Giry very much doubted she had heard it outside her own thoughts. She looked up from her sewing to squint at the other occupant of the room. The Persian's corpse man did not seem to have moved, though his face was turned full to the window as if he could see through it, his pale distorted face all that could be seen beneath piles of blankets in the warmth of the window seat.

"Just watch and tell me what time it was if you think he stops living," the Persian had requested of her before he hurried out. M. Giry couldn't tell if the creature was alive to begin with, let alone if he had passed on in the interim.

Then, as she squinted into the light, he spoke again: "I hear many voices. They may require your assistance, madame."

Though the voice emanated from those thin lips, it was almost as if some cultured gentleman was speaking from another room. One thing, it certainly motivated M. Giry to hurry down to the door as per Erik's advice.

As for Erik, he lay absorbing the sun, cocooned in comfort beyond what he'd known before. Though he had determined to die the past few days, it seemed to him it would have been a pity to miss this experience: the sound of everyday life, carts in the street, the rattle of cutlery, subdued voices, birdsong. It was a wonderful melody.

Now there were voices in the house. He could hear the conversation as clearly as if the others were in the same room, though they were actually two floors beyond!

"He's quite alright mademoiselle. Just a scrape or two. A bit of plaster and he'll be right as rain. Really, it was lucky Madame Giry came when she did as the little one might have been further injured in the general melee."

"I don't know how he got so far away," a tearful voice said. "All I can see is that carriage coming at him and...oh!"

"She's fainted again! Madame Giry, some cool water…"

As the Persian and M. Giry worked to revive the woman who Erik had heard speak, he was conscious of another sound; small, unsteady feet on the stair. He turned his face toward the small footsteps as they gained the landing and padded, unhesitatingly, into the room. It sounded like a very small child. This was instantly confirmed when the a small presence came to where Erik lay and pushed something against the quilts for his attention.

"Ush, ush," the little one said.

This was the first child Erik had ever come in contact with. He reached out hesitatingly with a fierce desire to touch, explore the small creature.

"Ush, ush," he heard again and something was thrust into his seeking fingers.

Erik knew immediately that it was a music box. The child was evidently looking for someone who could wind the key. The others in the house being occupied, the little one had set out to find other help.

Erik turned the box in his hands, seeking the key to wind it. When he found it, small fingers clasped around his own to help wind the mechanism. Startled by the contact, he tried to withdraw, but the child was insistent, pulling at his fingers and "ush, ushing" until Erik helped him turn the key and the music box began its tinkling melody.

The child set the music box on the edge of the window seat and made baby word noises as if he were explaining something. He didn't seem to mind in the least when Erik lightly touched his hair, still soft with baby curls, or lightly trace his face, round cheeks, the brush of long eyelashes, dimple of a nose.

It was the first time he'd touched the face of something that wasn't dead.

From past explorations, he'd discovered the qualities lacking in his own features and presumed that this difference was what made others react to his presence in what he could only hear were frightful gasps and cries. It had become such a familiar occurrence that it hardly phased him when he heard it.

"J… Jules!" A feminine voice croaked through a gasp.

So absorbed had Erik been in the moment that he had actually not heard her approach.

"Ah, yes, there is the little scamp!" The Persian exclaimed behind her. "Now I see how he does get away! Come, leave the gentleman to rest young man!"

The child was drawn out of Erik's sphere and he, likewise, drew back into the cocoon-like warmth of the blankets.

"Madame Giry actually says that our it was my guest here who alerted her to come downstairs!" The Persian tried to make light of the situation as he handed Jules into the young woman's arms. She could not seem to break out of the moment. "We are very lucky he was here, Mademoiselle Christine!" He prodded her gently toward the stairs.

"Thank...thank you," she whispered breathlessly toward the strange figure, unable to bring herself to look to see if he heard or not.


End file.
